How Justin Bieber Gets High on Nature

Emerging from this lingering winter that grips our sunny days with its cold, nearly dead fingers, you might find yourself craving a return to balmy days in the great outdoors. This yen has a name, apparently, called shinrin-yoku in Japanese, translating to “forest bathing.” The brief, leisurely visit to the woods spent listening to the trees, admiring the sun-dappled leaf-strewn floor, and smelling the moss-soaked air has well-documented health benefits. Apart from the obvious invitation to take a deep breath of the fresh air, it lowers stress levels, elevates memory, and, simply put, makes you more alive. And no one seems to be reaping these mind-clearing, energy-boosting benefits more actively than Justin Bieber.

Earlier this week, the pop star was spotted taking breaks from his Purpose world tour walking barefoot through a Boston park and, on another occasion, altering his perspective by climbing a tree. A scroll through his Instagram account proves that when he’s not onstage or in the studio, Bieber is becoming a modern-day Mowgli. Sunsets on the water, snuggling up to tigers, skinny-dipping in an otherwise uninhibited lake, and squirrels scaling trees pepper his concert and backstage snaps. “My soul breathing, I found my life when I laid it down,” he writes under one photograph of him sleeping beneath an open sky, asking his fans in another: “Look up at the stars for me tonight.” According to science and decades of Japanese tradition, we’d do well to heed his advice. In other words, it’s high time you took a hike.